This Way Comes
by Luna Maria Boulevardes
Summary: Brittany isn't stupid at all, but she kind of wishes she was when the alternative is being crazy.  Language, discussion of bipolar.


This Way Comes

By L. M. Boulevardes

She's not stupid, actually, and that's the best/worst part.

Britney is smart. She's really, _really_ smart, her IQ proves it. She's so smart, in fact, she knows that in a place like Lima, you're going to get farther acting stupid. The assine blond cheerio act keeps her safe and sound and keeps the noise out of her head and that's the way she likes it.

She has a closet she keeps locked and she tells everyone it's because that's the one the monster lives in, but that's just where she keeps her books and things. She has stacks of notebooks organized by date detailing everything from Calculus to the nuances of The Odyssey. That's the closet where she keeps everything she isn't supposed to be, everything her parents barely know she is and everything William McKinely can't every know she is.

She knows how to read a calendar. She can usually give the date in some five odd dating systems at any given time (Hebrew, Muslim, Mayan, Christian, and Christian Lunar). She knows how to dress for winter, expect when the monster comes and she doesn't anymore.

_Bipolar_ is a dirty word in Lima. Any kind of mental illness is, really. It's a small town and the people are close-minded, however much "diversity" they boast with fat kids and gay kids and white and black and Asians (_oh my)_. They barely understood Kurt being gay, so there was no way to explain to them that when she shows in a sleeveless top in December it's because she's gone crazy again and her mother is going to have to leave work (again) and pick her up from school (again) and maybe take her to the hospital (again).

She remembers the first she went to the hospital, when she was seven. She had decided to play the violin on her arms and to use a knife as a bow so it was red all over her bedroom walls. They looked at her and said _how does a seven-year-old become suicidal _and she had to explain to them that she wasn't trying to kill herself, it was just that the voices in her head told her that the knife and her arm would make the prettiest music.

_Poor Britney_. They were supposed to live in a city to be near a hospital but they don't because Lima is where parents' families are to help take care of her, and they can hardly afford the treatment she needs anyway. _Lord Tubbington is reading my diary_. That's the paranoid mania setting it, making everything swirl and blurt until her head hurts and she's climbing buildings to jump off of because she believe she can _fly_.

_Britney is a slut_. Well, there may be some truth in that one, but hypersexuality is a symptom of mania. She just wants to/needs to/has to fuck everyone she meets when she's manic like that, when she's swirling and laughing with her golden hair flying all over and all the lights of heaven shining down on her. She's the best cheerio because she has the energy, she had the buzz/buzz/buzz she needs to go/go/go when she's all hyped up and crazy.

_Britney is quiet today_. Yes, because now Britney is in a depression and she's been cutting herself and drinking too much, which makes her slur her words and say stupid things and still keep spreading her legs because she finds God in orgasms. She does drugs, smoking weed until her throat hurts too much to sing and the buzzing between her ears stops. She sits on her bed and watches the room change colors before her eyes, then she sits down at her desk and she writes mathematical theorems and choreography that she'll never show to anyone (she publishes one online anonymously once, they want to know who this mathematical genius is and after that she never slips so badly every again).

She dates Artie and for a minute she almost tells him her secret. She almost tells him that she's bipolar, that it's really bad and not controlled and she's sick and she's crazy but she is not stupid. She thinks for a glittering moment that he might understand, that he might find some kinship in the fact that he's sick and that everyone has always treated him differently and badly too. But then he keeps talking and talking and she realize that he's as closed-minded as anyone else in Lima, that he was in an accident and it's different because he wasn't born a fuck-up like she was. So she fucks him because it's easier to hate someone when you're just having sex with them, when you're doing them a nasty favor and you can throw that bad in their face at any moment like shoving a dog's nose in its shit.

Sometimes she wants to be smart. She really, really wants to tell everyone how fucking smart she is and not be scorned so much. She wants to be special and important and, well, more like Rachel Berry, actually. People like Rachel get to go places, while she's figuring that in the coming years after graduation she's just going to bounce from hospital to hospital, hospital to home until she dies or kills herself. She sometimes wonders if it will be in a manic episode or a depressed one, if she'll go out quietly or clawing to hang on. Maybe she'll die having sex. She almost wishes she could, because it would be so fucked up and horrible and wonderful and she kind of wants to happen with someone from Lima so she can hurt them like she's been hurt with the hiding and crying and the hallucinations.

She forgets to be stupid one day and of all people it's Blaine who catches it and figures it out. He grabs her arm in the hall and drags her into an empty classroom, giving her a look of barely-suppressed curiosity. She gives him her innocent smile, head cocked to one side so her pretty blond hair falls over her shoulders (she loves the gold). It's a good day today, and her meds are keeping her steady. She's been having more and more good days lately, and she could almost-maybe start to have a little hope.

"What's up?" she asks, sitting down on one of the desks. Blaine grins at her, his lips so big they almost spilt his face. "I can't be very long, I need extra time to get to class after lunch. I get lost a lot," she explains. He laughs, and the sound shakes her. For a minute, she slips and her mask is on the floor.

"The hell you do. This is a cool notebook, by the way," he says, holding up a black leather-bound notebook. Instantly, all the color drains from her face and she stops breathing. _Her diary_. She almost can't believe he read it, and he turns serious at her look.

"I wasn't snooping, I was just trying to figure out whose it was, well, at first," he admits sheepishly. She stalks across the room to take the book back form him, then stands there, glaring at his perfected-coifed hair and white-teeth, wishing she could dig in her own teeth and rip him into bits so small they would be no body left to implicate her.

"That's personal," she growls, returning to her place across the room. He scrambles after her.

"Hey! I want to know why you act stupid all the time. What's going on with you?" he asks, standing between her and the door. She smiles cruelly, then opens her bag to show him the stacks of orange pill bottles.

"I'm fucking crazy," she sneers. He doesn't seem to have anything to say to that, so she closes it and waits for him to move. She thinks she might start crying soon, and she doesn't want him to see that.

"But – that's not right. You could do it, you know. Come out. Be whoever you are. Like me, and Kurt, and Santana . . ." his voice drops under her look. It's not angry, mostly just sad and wistful and patronizing, as though he couldn't possibly understand.

"That's not how it works," she says, biting her lip as though even that is too much. She pushes him aside easily, ducking back into the hall and pretending that nothing is wrong as her faces burns.

She doesn't see him yet, but she knows he's somewhere out there, right beyond the hill. There's nothing she can do but stand at the gate, wathicng and waiting for the monster's return and the crazy that consumes and eats and hurts and leaves her always spinning, always spinning fast and faster –

Oh yes, oh-by-the-pricking-of-my-thumbs-something-wicked-this-way-comes.


End file.
